The many crimes of Peter Sutcliffe
A review of "Inside the Mind of the Yorkshire Ripper" by Chris Clark and Tim Hicks.
[Thanks to NetGalley for providing a complimentary digital review copy of this book.]
One of the worst things a critic or reviewer can do, I’m told, is to write about what book he wishes the author had written instead of accepting the book on its own terms. If I were reviewing a Danielle Steel romance novel, there are many ways I can critique the material, but it wouldn’t really be fair for me to say I wish Steel (and/or her ghostwriter) had written the life story of Mr. T instead.
Of course, any book would be improved by the inclusion of Mr. T. But I digress.
When reading Inside The Mind of The Yorkshire Ripper by Chris Clark and Tim Hicks, I tried to keep this principle in mind. But the writers have to do their own part, too. At the very least, they should give their book a title which actually reflects its contents.
Because Inside the Mind of the Yorkshire Ripper, about the shocking crimes of British serial killer Peter Sutcliffe, barely gets into the inner workings of his twisted mind at all. Indeed, there is more information about the mental state of his wife, who required mental health treatment at some points during their marriage.
If only Sutcliffe had gotten some kind of treatment before he murdered at least thirteen women between 1975 and 1980.
I say “at least,” because Inside the Mind of the Yorkshire Ripper posits that Sutcliffe might have attacked and killed many more people - almost all female - than the ones which were confirmed.
Indeed, the book is effectively a list of murders, assaults and abductions, some of which were definitively the work of the Yorkshire Ripper, and many more for which he might have been responsible. And not all of them were in Britain.
One intriguing section of the book hypothesizes that Sutcliffe, whose work as a truck driver often took him to the European continent, may have carried out some murders in Sweden.
I initially dismissed this as pure speculation - sadly, there is a lot of speculation in this book, with the writers saying Sutcliffe “probably” or “might have” carried out some of these crimes - but it turns out there are other investigators who’ve come to the same conclusions about the Swedish killings.
COVID-19 died of Sutcliffe in November, 2020, so we may never know for sure just how many more killings he carried out before his arrest in 1981. One thing the book does make certain is how the incompetence, tunnel vision, disorganization and ass-covering of British police forces ensured he was left free to kill long after he could and probably should have been caught.
When reading about police bungling in serial-murder cases, I try my best to remember that true-crime writers are operating with the benefit of hindsight. If only we could catch murderers after they’d already been caught, it would be so much easier.
Indeed, if law enforcement actually did their jobs well in catching a serial killer, we wouldn’t know about it, because they’d have caught him before he killed more than one person. But that’s another post.
But there really is no excuse for how badly the Yorkshire Ripper case was screwed up. Different police forces across the United Kingdom barely communicated with each other. A hoax cassette tape purporting to be from the killer sent police on a wild goose chase after suspects with the same accent. And - as is far too common in such matters, including the Robert Pickton murders here in Canada - police failed to take many of the murders seriously because the victims were sex workers and therefore considered disposable, if not deserving of their cruel fate.
Clark and Hicks have backgrounds in law enforcement, and at the end of the book they offer some suggestions about how such matters should be handled in the future. Sadly, such insightful moments are few and far between. Inside the Mind of the Yorkshire Ripper contains some intriguing material from which a better book may someday be written.
And maybe, just maybe, that book will explain why Sutcliffe did it. Despite that title, there isn’t much about it in this one.